Wednesday, November 20, 2019

My journey through Sanchin Kata


When you begin your martial arts journey if you work at it you never really know where you end up.

 

Specifically I choose to focus on my journey through Sanchin kata. Which became a personal experience of many different layers. Many of which I kept for the most part to myself.

 

When I was a brown belt I first learned Sanchin from Charles Murray. It employed hard focused breathin and much muscular tension. Charles and I worked on it a great deal, and that is how I performed it on my black belt test.
 
 
It was just a kata of the system, no other discussion was given to what I might contain. Then as a black belt I continued with the study.

 

Along the way I trained with many good martial artists in  other systems. Many of those systems did not contain Sanchin kata, yet those systems produced many marvelous martial artists.

 

About that time I also was reading in martial arts magazines many discussions about the value of Sanchin training. Ways that I was not taught, but gave me many things to think about.

 

Right after my shodan I became a youth instructor at the Scranton Boys Club. I taught Isshinryu exactly as I had been taught, and that program went well.

 

Having more interests and beginning  visiting many friends from tournaments I gain insight in what others were doing..But because of personal interest I began a two year study of ½ hour a week into the Yang Long Fist T’ai Chi Chaun. I was being instructed by Ernest Rothrock and it contained many levels of instruction. In fact I  continued with that practice for the rest of my life.

 

Very soon I found a personal conflict with my Isshinryu Sanchin kata practice and my Yang T’ai Chi studies. On my own I really did not feel I had anyone to talk about it with. I worked out for that time I would de-emphasice my Sanchin kata practice, and continue with my T’ai Chi studies. None of the youth were not ready for Sanchin as I was taught so that made no conflict in my life.

 

Then when my t’ai chi studies became more advanced I was able to emphasize my sanchin to how I was taught. I at that time was able to keep those separate studies separate in my training.

 

Now application studies of how kata technique might be used was not part of the Isshinryu paradigm I was taught.

But I became more interested in how applications worked. I never considered that Sanchin should be anything different.

 

 Years later I listened to a discourse. from a Senior instructor I was training with for a decade and whose system did not include Sanchin, go into detail that Sanchin was for basic training and not for application study.

 

I disagreed with him, stating Sanchin just used karate technique, and as such those movements could be applied.

He strongly disagreed with me, and at that time the discussion ceased,

 

But as I went further into my own study of kata application potential, I never ceased to follow my own understanding. And as I was so much on my own, never really discussed it further with anyone. Just followed my own nose.

 

I was then teaching youth and adults in Derry, NH. And when appropriate Sanchin was studied exactly as I had been taught.  Shortly after that time a then Uechi brown belt joined my program, and privately taught me the Uechi Sanchin and Seisan. Which privately I then worked on.

 

Having learned the Uechi Sanchin kata was an experience. With the tension and hard breathing, I found a more natural release of energy with the Uechi technique execution. But that was something I kept for my own studies.

 

I began serious study of some Sanchin technique applications. Among finding so many possibilities for mawashi-uke use, but more serious use of that same technique series in tjimande use for arm dissolocation, shocking strikes even to arm breaking. Still I was only seeing the pieces.

Run several decades forward and I decided to make a major change in my Sanchin kata execution for my own personal study. My senior students with more than several decades of training were placed in charge of Sanchin kata training and practice. I worked on my own ideas for the kata.

 

I, following the Uechi execution which  I found so intreaguing, decided to practice Sanchin kata with natural breathing, no tension and at full speed.

 

What I discovered was so amazing. For the first time Sanchin really felt right to me. I never went back.

 

All of which I explained to my senior students, but kept their Isshinryu Sanchin cannon to what I studied.

 

I began to go further into my Sanchin application studies. 

 

Using my senior students as attackers. I discovered how Sanchin openings was a great way to tear any karate attack apart. As an attack begins, any attack both hands rise up. One hand to deflect an attack, the other hand to deliver a hard rising strike into the attacker. Inside line of defense. Outside line of defense. With turns, with out turns. Simply a superior way to tear into any attack.

 

About that time Charles Murray was able to make regular visits to my school. I asked him to accept responsibility to oversee the Sanchin training with my students, and he did that.

 

I continued on my own private Sanchin practice.

 

Sanchin was something I lived, explored and became my core personal practice.

 

These days much disabled I still work on a bit of my Yang form, and find the one kata I retain best is my Sanchin kata practice.

 

I have shared so many things with my students. None of them have the time to keep up all those studies. I expect they will personally chose what is best for them Most likely each will chose differently, that is as I expect them to do.

 

But for me my Sanchin remains what I worked out.

 

A brief glimpse of my Sanchin kata compared to the Sanchin kata of Charles Murray. This was soon after the onset of my disabilities and does not fully represent my practice, But I feel it shows a bit of what I did.

 

 

 
Of course the Sanchin kata of Charles Murray is the correct version. I am whatever I am and that is sufficient to the day.

 
A related post from my blog
https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2015/02/breathing-patterns.html

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